126
Survey of young researchers raises concerns over future of science in U.S.
(news.harvard.edu)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
126 points (98.5% liked)
science
28896 readers
525 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
As a non-US resident that doesn't much read the news, is there any particular reason for the comparison of 'now' vs '6 months ago'? Has there been a particular change in policy or some other big event in the US that's motivated the sudden change in attitude?
Making such profound changes to how a country functions is like turning a large ship. It can take time.
TRUMP and WH have been attacking defunding science/education grants all over the country. a small percentage of researchers already fled the US, in case violence picks up, and intellectuals are usually the first targets.
this in combination of the ongoing problem with stem, low job prospects.
US federal budgeting this year have pushed hard to gut science. I've heard talking points regurgitated by college educated folks that businesses will pay for it instead, but when pressed for examples or how it would work they are only able to point to engineering projects, they can't differentiate between basic scientific research producing testable, accurate models and the products and services built using this models.
Businesses will pay for studies that help businesses or had a profit incentive. When you hear the govt spent a large sum of money studying how ocelots react to opium or somelike that, people usually say that's a waste of money, rather than finding out why.
Businesses will probably also do them inefficiently because they only think about themselves.
Like there was one Republican complaint about studying soybeans. Beans! Useless!
Yeah well guess what one of the biggest crops in the US is. We used to export soy to Asia.
https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/23114-opinion-the-trump-administration-is-wrong-about-the-value-of-crop-research-labs-and-farmers-know-it
yeah, Trump.
Not that things weren't kind of shitty before, he just accelerated the problems by defunding science and preventing foreigners from coming here to study, which sadly make up many 1/3 of the students of our PhD programs, especially hard sciences.
higher education in the USA needs systematically reform, but I don't think anything Trump has done has improved anything, just accelerated the issues by turning off the money/labor spigot so many research programs were overly-reliant on.
a lot of this talented foreign labor is now going to study in other countries rather than the USA and that will impact things for decades, reducing USA's lead in many scientific fields.
"... money / labor spigot so many research programs were overly-reliant on."
I don't see how research or more generally anything at all could get done without money or labor.